Is it the design, the tools that have been decided upon, the tools they created?Is it the community, the quality we expect from Linux Mint?I think it's all of the above, and more.

I agree - Mint is the software, as well as the community, and, overall a distro that listens to its community and tries to be the best distro possible for its users and its goals. I think that the software is very important, but Linux Mint is so much more than that.

Here are some more tools where I question their value.I don't use them, and I can't even think of a good reason why others would, but I'd like to hear if I'm wrong:

Backup Tool

Domain Blocker

Upload Manager

Honestly, I've never used these tools. However, I have seen quite a few mentions of the Backup Tool being very helpful, and I think it is important to have some good backup tool installed by default (and this is, after all, an unofficial Mint edition, so why not Mint's backup tool?). Gene mentioned Clonezilla, which is probably my favorite way to backup stuff, but it is a little bit too complicated for a lot of end users (or just unknown) IMO. Mint Backup is a fairly reliable and simple backup tool, and it is a good idea to have, especially considering the possible breakages UP to UP.

On the other hand, the Upload Manager has always seemed kind of pointless to me (I have no idea what it actually does), and I would be in favor of removing that. The Domain Blocker also seems pointless, and I believe there are similar apps with more functionality. I don't think either has been improved or really worked on in a while.

I use one theme that I slightly modified (darker background, green 'selected background) for Mint.It started at Atolm-GTK3, but I made it into Mint-Atolm... EDIT:Its been a while, and I am thinking that perhaps someone else did the changes on this one? I have modified 'selene', but perhaps not this one. The joys of getting old.... Looks "Minty" with Mint-X icons.

I guess I'm a little confused with all of this so sorry for the noob question. I'm new to LMDE as I just installed it the other day (XFCE) and I understand the difference between Debian Testing and LMDE but what, if any, difference will there be with the unofficial version? If it doesn't use Update Packs and is just a rolling release then isn't it just the same as Debian Testing apart from what packages are included? I'm thinking of uninstalling LMDE for now and trying out testing for a while just to check it out.

Going forward, LMDE ISOs will be released in two versions: MATE and Cinnamon. The decision was taken not to maintain a KDE version of LMDE and to stop maintaining the Xfce version. This was a painful decision to make considering the quality of LMDE Xfce and unofficial LMDE KDE, but one that made sense for Linux Mint since LMDE Xfce represented only 4% of the Linux Mint audience. This is also consistent with our strategy to focus on what we do best, to do less and do it better and to invest less time in maintaining editions and more time in developing the core technology that they use. It was a tough call at the time when Linux Mint lost its Fluxbox and LXDE editions. They were great but they only appealed to a minority of our users and we can see the benefits of this decision now, we can release all our editions and switch to focusing entirely on the development of the next iteration much faster in our release cycle. Whether it’s Cinnamon, MDM, the Software Manager, the Mint tools, the LMDE live-installer or even new projects such as a Driver Manager or R&D plans related to the installation and/or base underneath Linux Mint, development is extremely important to us.

Bad news, but in many ways good.

Schoelje has stepped up and is going to put together an "UN-Official" edition.(It will be a much lighter version, and have lots of end user input in development. AND XFCE 4.10).

The OLD LMDE/XFCE (201204) will just keep going along with Debian XFCE updates, and the standard Mint updates (less Mint XFCE specifics--there was not that much anyway..)

Just checked my old LMDE/XFCE install, and there are actually only TWO Mint specific XFCE packages that I have left installed

zerozero wrote:in the topic of what makes mint minty, two small requests very dear to me- inxi- apt

I use inxi a lot and would really like it installed by default. I use apt-get most of the time, but I like the idea of apt.

dritzominous wrote:- Themeing

We seriously need a darker linux mint theme for Xfce WITH Gtk3.x support. The Mint X and Mint Z themes just aren't cutting it for me.

As for themes, I think we need to make sure that the default themes support GTK 3 well. I love Orta and shiki-wise, but neither have good (or any) GTK 3 support, so they look bad with apps like abiword that have been ported to gtk 3. Greybird and bluebird are both quite nice Xfce themes that support GTK 3 fairly seamlessly. Mint X also has good GTK 3 support. Dark themes with good gtk 3 support that Gene didn't mention include Adwaita-X Dark (which is my favorite) and greenbird, which is manjaro's theme. Greenbird is kind of like a mix of shiki-wise and greybird. I'd vote for greenbird, adwaita-X dark, greybird, bluebird, zukini, zukitwo, or Mint-X.

Edit: Also, the xfce4 and xfce4-goodies packages are just metapackages so they can be removed without a problem. You just have to mark the packages they installed as manually installed.

i was going through the theming issue right now:- first we need to make sure that any theme has gtk2/gtk3.4 support at the moment and at the same time be sure (as much as we can) that soon(ish) they will be gtk3.6 compatibleunfortunately this leaves atolm-gtk3 out (and this is also bad news for me because together with orta this is one of my all-time favs) but as we can see it's not going to be ported to gtk3.6 (ahh and don't read the link that MrMars gives as explanation for dropping the theme dev., really don't )the other "i want pretty please" was orta but Nick never ported it to gtk3 (that's why you find those visual issues cww)rebek did that porting (the theme labelled for 12.04 should work just now in lmde but we have no warranties about the transition)

At this point, I think greybird, bluebird, ambiance, and Mint-X are the only fairly reliable GTK 2/GTK 3 themes. I think some other themes (like Adwaita-X Light/Dark, Zukitwo, and Zukini) are going to be updated, but I have been seeing a lot of devs (Clem, Manjaro devs, and some others) who have been frustrated by their theme(s) breaking frequently with every gnome update. Clem dropped Mint-Z because of the GTK 3 maintenance, and the manjaro devs (manjaro is based on Arch so it is rolling) have some warnings about updating because very few themes have 3.6 support.

The other problem is updating themes - how do we push themes to people, since LMDE is rolling? AFAIK we are using the standard mint repos, so we have to have a theme package to update from 3.4 to 3.6. Schoelje could ask clem to put a package in the mint repos, but otherwise I don't know how other than using the default Mint-X theme.

zerozero wrote:unfortunately this leaves atolm-gtk3 out (and this is also bad news for me because together with orta this is one of my all-time favs) but as we can see it's not going to be ported to gtk3.6 (ahh and don't read the link that MrMars gives as explanation for dropping the theme dev., really don't )

cwwgateway wrote:The other problem is updating themes - how do we push themes to people, since LMDE is rolling? AFAIK we are using the standard mint repos, so we have to have a theme package to update from 3.4 to 3.6. Schoelje could ask clem to put a package in the mint repos, but otherwise I don't know how other than using the default Mint-X theme.

That is exactly my problem. I can't rely on Clem including any package I'd like to have in the repositories. The only viable solution is to start my own repository, and there I have another slight problem: I haven't got a clue how to do that (but it's high on my wish list).

Dark theme: have you guys tried forcing dark theme with Adwaita in gnome-tweak-tool? I think it's easily the prettiest dark theme at the moment ahead of old custom themes like atolm, and for obvious reasons gtk updates won't be an issue.

Thank you for this thread. That’s all I can say. You most definitely have made this forum into something special. You clearly know what you are doing, you’ve covered so many bases. Thanks!

Dark theme: have you guys tried forcing dark theme with Adwaita in gnome-tweak-tool? I think it's easily the prettiest dark theme at the moment ahead of old custom themes like atolm, and for obvious reasons gtk updates won't be an issue.

I just looked at the gnome tweak tool dependencies, and there doesn't seem to be too much gnome-related stuff (and the 3.6 one has the same/similar deps), but I don't know if adwaita or gnome tweak tool work with Xfce.

Schoelje wrote:

cwwgateway wrote:The other problem is updating themes - how do we push themes to people, since LMDE is rolling? AFAIK we are using the standard mint repos, so we have to have a theme package to update from 3.4 to 3.6. Schoelje could ask clem to put a package in the mint repos, but otherwise I don't know how other than using the default Mint-X theme.

That is exactly my problem. I can't rely on Clem including any package I'd like to have in the repositories. The only viable solution is to start my own repository, and there I have another slight problem: I haven't got a clue how to do that (but it's high on my wish list).

I have no idea how setting up PPAs actually work, but in (my) theory you should be able to upload packages to it that work on Debian and then add the repo to your sources.list. They may have to be compatible with both Ubuntu and Debian (again, I don't know how PPAs work), but for themes that seems doable.

Well I have been trying out Debian (Wheezy) and I'm not all that impressed really. I'm also trying out Crunchbang (testing) and really like it a lot, though on a different machine. Another thing is the forums seem to be friendlier than Debians. Not that I spent much time on the Debian forums but I saw one thread over there started by a LMDE user and he was given very harsh treatment in my opinion. On the other hand the documentation on Debian's site is second to none. I will be keeping an eye out on what goes on here with the unofficial XFCE but in the meantime I'll explore #! a little more. And updating my Mint KDE to 14 RC.